- “Why Labour bigwigs already wonder if this will be Starmer’s first – and only Christmas – in Downing Street” – Labour MPs have begun to think the unthinkable, says Dan Hodges in the Mail.
- “Should we all be getting just a little bit worried for Sir Keir Starmer?” – The Prime Minister appears to be suffering from PDS – Progressive Derangement Syndrome, says the Telegraph‘s Camillla Tominey. “Characterised by an inability to acknowledge how bad your decision-making has been, the condition is typically fuelled by a moral superiority complex. Famous sufferers include the Archbishop of Canterbury, Kamala Harris and the Duchess of Sussex.”
- “Tory donations exceed Labour’s as Starmer’s popularity plummets” – Conservative donations pulled ahead of Labour’s as confidence collapsed in the Government only a few months after it was elected, says the Telegraph.
- “‘Two-tier’ BBC refuses to play Keir Starmer parody despite airing anti-Thatcher song” – The BBC has been accused of “two-tier broadcasting” following its refusal to play the Keir Starmer parody ‘Freezing This Christmas’ despite airing a song critical of Margaret Thatcher (in 1980), reports the Telegraph.
- “No pensioner should ever vote Labour again” – The palpable sense of betrayal among millions of retirees will not easily be forgotten, says Ros Altmann in the Telegraph.
- “Farage ‘hasn’t the faintest idea’ how to manage the economy, says Reeves” – The Chancellor has claimed the Reform leader “hasn’t a clue” how to tackle the cost of living crisis as she refused to apologise for her tax raids, reports the Telegraph.
- “Rachel Reeves told to halt diversity drive that will cost City £1 billion” – Tory front benchers have written to the Chancellor objecting to regulations which will force firms to collect data on inclusion, the Telegraph reports.
- “Councils revolt over Labour’s tax raid on farmers” – In recent weeks, almost two dozen councils have passed motions calling on the Chancellor and Environment Secretary to axe the ‘tractor tax’ measure, which they say is an “assault” on the countryside, reports the Telegraph.
- “Who is the Magdeburg attack suspect? A Saudi doctor and ‘critic of Islam’” – Identified by local media as Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, the man suspected of driving into a crowd of shoppers in Germany is a psychiatrist and Muslim apostate, says the Times.
- “Germany was warned by Saudi Arabia over Christmas market killer” – Saudi Arabia says it repeatedly warned the German Government about the extremist views of the man who drove a car into a Christmas market killing at least five people, including a nine-year-old, and injuring hundreds more, reports the Times.
- “Magdeburg Christmas Market Attack” – Eugyppius on the terror attack.
- “Magdeburg suspect prompts more questions than answers” – In UnHerd, international relations expert Ralph Schoellhammer says troubling questions remain about the Christmas market attacker: “While the Magdeburg attack might not fit the usual pattern of an Islamist terror attack, it also doesn’t match the behaviour of a Right-wing extremist.”
- “Net Zero ‘grocery tax’ to push up shopping bills by £1.4 billion” – A new ‘grocery tax’ designed to achieve the Government’s Net Zero targets will push up household shopping bills by up to £1.4 billion a year, the Telegraph reports.
- “Ed Miliband’s Net Zero mania isn’t just a threat to energy security. It’s making us so reliant on China, he’s now a threat to national security” – The Energy Secretary justifies his dash to decarbonise the electricity grid by claiming it will free us from dependence on the fossil fuels of foreign dictators, notes Andrew Neil in the Mail. But it’s making us dangerously reliant on China.
- “Should I become Lord Young of Loftus Road?” – In the Spectator, Toby wonders if he’ll ever achieve as much as his father, a pillar of the Left-wing establishment who was also made a life peer in his early 60s.
- “Tories must truly have a death wish if they want Kemi Badenoch to fail” – Troubling times need serious leaders. Kemi can be that, but only if the sniping ends and the party unites behind her, says Janet Daley in the Telegraph.
- “The Trump effect will benefit Farage – and cost the Tories” – When in power, the Tories didn’t sort out illegal immigration, reduce legal immigration or cut the tax burden, and with Trump heading to the White House they’re paying the price, says Patrick O’Flynn in the Spectator.
- “Trump appoints British TV producer as his special envoy to the U.K.” – Donald Trump has appointed British TV Producer Mark Burnett, who worked with him after creating the U.S. series The Apprentice, as his special envoy to the U.K.
- “Robby Starbuck: the capitalist engaged in a ‘war on woke’” – The Times profiles the 35 year-old American activist who has forced a string of major companies to abandon diversity initiatives after threatening boycotts.
- “Academic freedom needs legal safeguards” – Violations of academic freedom are endangering the progress of knowledge and the pursuit of truth, says Abhishek Saha in the Critic.
- “Francis Fukuyama on the World in 2025” – In a Substack tour d’horizon, Yascha Mounk and Francis Fukuyama discuss the fall of Assad, the rise of China, the crisis in Europe and what awaits the United States under Trump.
- “Who is the worst political commentator?” – The deadline for the prestigious ‘Most Odious Political Commentator of the Year’ award is approaching, says Rod Liddle in the Spectator. “Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart’s joint bid is so far out in front of the pack, that the result is surely a foregone conclusion. But this should not deter us from running through some of the other noble contenders.”
- “Telegraph sale in limbo as Ministers weigh up whether to intervene” – The Redbird IMI deadline for exclusive talks with Dovid Efune has expired as the funders baulk at the price tag and the Government decides whether to intervene, reports the Times.
- “Is the Kursk operation still worth the cost?” – As Ukrainian soldiers question the value of holding a fragment of Russian territory over defending their own homeland, the reality of their situation looms large, says Svitlana Morenets in the Spectator.
- “In 2024, our insane asylum rules became impossible to ignore” – The ‘human rights’ of foreign criminals are routinely prioritised over the safety of law-abiding people, says Rakib Ehsan in Spiked.
- “A food apocalypse is coming” – There’s no plan to feed Britain in a crisis, warns James Rebanks in UnHerd.
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Regarding the Times article about Apple above ( which I haven’t read as I have no time for paywalls ), I had no idea what a horrible and unethical company they were until I read this fine substack from A Midwestern Doctor, which covers many things as well as the current protests in China;
“The current protests we are facing are a result of this system being used excessively. Things in China have now reached the point that many Chinese citizens are willing to risk relocation to a concentration camp (which is not a pretty subject to discuss) to protest what is happening (similarly many Iranians have recently been imprisoned or worse for protesting against the government). China’s government is predictably responding to this instability with even more heavy-handed tactics and initiating a downhill spiral of unsuccessful propaganda (which will be revisited later). As stated before, I believe this cycle is ultimately being initiated by China’s economic instability.
China’s present situation should make the absolute futility of our preferred method for managing COVID-19 apparent. Even with an elaborate system that tracks every (vaccinated) citizen, imposes draconian lockdowns at will, and tests on an almost daily basis, nothing can be done to contain the spread of COVID-19 and when the system is dialed up as high as it possibly can go, the existing government will break before the spread is stopped.”
https://amidwesterndoctor.substack.com/p/the-current-protests-in-china-are
“China’s present situation should make the absolute futility of our preferred method for managing COVID-19 apparent”
And that’s the problem. The doctor believes in convid when the reality is that the C1984 is basically a rebranded ‘flu which was introduced in order to get Agenda 2030 up and running. Which is why I have little time for endless talking about C1984.
With ref the recent royal racism crisis; I read what was apparently a fairly complete account of the dialogue, and Lady Hussy was in my opinion racist and/or extraordinarily dumb/demented because she appeared to repeatedly refuse to accept that the local community project representative in front of her was a British citizen, a British resident, and insisted on knowing where their “people” came from. It sounded as if Lady Hussy simply couldn’t conceive of such an obviously black person being British, a British citizen and resident, and was impatiently condescending/contemptuous in her efforts to “get at the truth” of where this person “really” came from … or was being provocative/deliberately obtuse/offensive. There was definitely something wrong. I do understand why her reactions caused offence, even distress.
The person she was speaking to was very clearly not ethnically British and had apparently changed her name from a British one to Ngozi Fulani, so it was perfectly reasonable to ask about her origins.
Not after she had already answered that question and said she was from England.
PS. I also thought that it was a mountain out of a molehill when I first read about it, but reading the account of the full exchange I understood why it was upsetting.
…. people, on both the giving and receiving ends of such reactions, used to laugh about this sort of thing, laugh it off, dismiss it as just business as usual; it was normal, etc ….
.. but it can’t be very pleasant, especially in a situation where you believe that you can’t answer back, can’t say what you think about the reaction, etc.
I agree with Fulani that Lady Hussey shouldn’t have lost her post over it though. *That* is where the lack of proportion lies.
I think the big problem is that the setting/context didn’t allow or encourage Fulani to speak up, to call Lady Hussey out about it at the time. She didn’t seem to think that she could say what she thought to Lady Hussey, the occasion and the place ( and Lady Hussey’s title too ?) silenced her.
I remember a black colleague recounting the time there was National Front march along her street when she was a young girl. ‘What are they shouting?’ she asked her father. ‘Go back home’ said her father. ‘But I am home’ she replied.
It was interesting to hear what Nigel Farage said about it all, on his out-and-about programme last night, between 19:00 & 20:00. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDWB3_45yPg The gist of it being that Hussy was the ‘victim’, as it were. He was probably right by saying that this wouldn’t make the press anywhere else!
2 thoughts come to mind:
1 If she really were “racist”, she wouldn’t even have spoken to her in the first place.
2 Being from Liverpool, I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been asked if I have Irish ancestry – is this any different?
Yes, what she said was thick-eared, heavy-handed and inappropriate but to say it was “racist” is, to my mind, stretching the definition.
This post suggests the trigger for the questions might have been the mismatch between the accent (West Indian) and the name (African): https://www.unz.com/isteve/ngozi-fulani-is-actually-marlene-headley/
“Switzerland, facing an unprecedented power shortage, contemplates a partial ban on the use of electric vehicles”
It’s ironic that Switzerland imports a lot from Germany & France these days. It’s long been using hydro electric generation, and of course the difficulties outside the border encouraged it’s development, along with electric traction on the railways.
They could turn CERN off, that would save a bit of electric (1.2 terrawatts in 2012, probably a lot more now).
Today’s onshore wind farm story: https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2022/12/onshore-wind-farm-ban-could-have-added-800m-to-household-bills/
Remember the original SARS virus? Neither do I, other than some vague memory of it causing panic then it seemed to disappear.
Why did that one vanish but this new one seems to be hanging around? What was different this time around?
https://off-guardian.org/2022/12/01/the-real-reason-behind-chinas-zero-covid-policy/
The brilliant Kit Knightly at Off-G providing a superb explanation of China’s role in the Scamdemic.
Truly insightful piece – thanks for posting…
This is the effect of suppressing and censoring information:
Before, we could assume most information was closer to false and pick out what we deemed to be closer to true for further debate. This worked well because those amplifying closer to false information were lost in the sea of all the other assumed closer to false information.
Now, we are to assume most information to be closer to true (because it’s been filtered) and pick out what we deem to be closer to false and remove it. Those amplifying closer to false information now have more status because most information that we see has to be assumed to be closer to true until it is verified and/or removed.
The more information is removed the more we must assume the information we see is closer to true, even if it isn’t.
Posted in error.
Another cause of death unknown:-
https://www.nme.com/news/tv/orange-is-the-new-black-actor-brad-william-henke-dies-aged-56-3359683
It was possible he was injected given he had worked on a NBCUniversal production: Law and Order: Special Victims Unit
https://screenrant.com/law-order-svu-warren-leight-unvaccinated-actors-response/
https://off-guardian.org/2022/12/01/the-real-reason-behind-chinas-zero-covid-policy/
CONCLUSION
To sum up, China’s “zero covid” approach forms a vital piece of the overall pandemic narrative, working in conjunction with Western governments as a deliberately stark contrast:
-It promotes the idea that vaccines work and helped prevent further lockdowns here.
-It shines a flattering light on Western governments, who appear less draconian by comparison.
-It serves as an argument for the effectiveness of lockdowns and other authoritarian measures.
Perhaps most importantly, the supposed difference works to corral and control public debate.
Traditionally leftwing critics of Western capitalism are forced to defend vaccines and lockdowns by their ideological loyalty to China.
Conversely, right-wingers have China’s “socialist” practices to point their fingers at, whilst praising Western capitalist pharmaceutical innovation for saving us from the need for tighter lockdowns.
Each side is controlled by their ideology, not realising their loyalties are being used to position them inside the permissible spectrum of opinion.
I posted a link to this excellent Kit Knightly article this morning.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2022/12/doug-casey/global-government-vs-the-people/
I’ll go so far as to say that Central Bank Digital Currencies and digital “health passports” are the most dangerous threats to the freedom and independence of the average human being in modern history—perhaps in world history. They will control where you can go, what you can do, and what you can own. They’re both very big deals, and they’ll be daily facts of life before 2023 is over. It’s very disturbing that we don’t hear either of them discussed anywhere. They should be taken with the utmost seriousness and stopped.